Five Day Challenge:

Time To Think

Time to think.

We all need it. But in our busy days, can we find it?

We can with the Five Day Challenge to unlock an hour of thinking time every day.

Scroll down to find my 15-minute guides to unlocking thinking time. A new guide will be launched each day from 23-27 June 2025.

Then reinforce your new system with a free 30 minute coaching session.

Welcome to the June 2025 Five Day Challenge

Welcome to the first Raw Identity Coaching five day challenge. Through five 15 minute micro-sessions you can make incremental steps towards being a values-driven leader.

This challenge is about giving you time to think at work. A senior executive, or any leader, is valued in large part for their insight and analysis. Following this executive coaching challenge will support prioritisation, delegation, strategic oversight and creativity.

Click on the day one tab to get started, and don’t forget to share how you’re getting on. When you’ve finished the challenge, get in touch for a free 30 minute coaching session to reinforce your new system.

Get in touch

I’m too busy. My team needs my sign off. I’m back to back with meetings.

Let’s shift the narrative. Are you busy all day with high impact tasks? Does your team need your insight and ideas, or your exhaustion? Are all those meetings serving a clear purpose and then ending?

You want a high-performing team under your expert leadership. Key to this are trust and empowerment, and a recognition that your part in the workflow value chain is at that strategic insight and effective oversight level. So let’s start with making your interactions with others in that value chain as purposeful as we can.

Today’s activities:

Our energy levels ebb and flow. Jot down your energy levels during the working day, noting when you feel most and least energised so you get a complete map of your energy levels throughout the working day.

Find a set of recurring meetings from your diary, one to ones with your managers, for example. Write down what you usually cover in these meetings. If you cover more than one purpose, then split them into more than one meeting and allocate only the time you need for that. Split work updates from performance discussions. Split projects from personnel issues. If you’re worried about having lots of little meetings then time-block them, putting similar purpose meetings into one weekly block.

Day one is done. Bank the map - we’ll use that later in the week - and enjoy your shorter, focused and productive meetings.

You'll know that your role is to maintain the flow of knowledge. Doing this well means you need knowledge of how your team is progressing and any obstacles they face. Meeting with the manager is one way to do this, but there are other methods that offer efficient feedback loops with an immediate impact.

I call these ‘remote controls’ because you give control of them to your teams, making them remote from you (see what I did there?). They are also designed to share information and learning swiftly and benefit the whole team.

Today’s activities:

Implement one of the remote control mechanisms below, or a similar one of your invention.

Set up a shared project dashboard either using a digital platform or an online document and get the project team to keep it updated. All anyone needs to do to see the latest is take a glance.
On a Friday, get all your managers to send you two bullet points on what their team is doing the following week. Collate into one email, add your own activities, and send it to every team on Monday morning

We’re on a roll, but to give you fair warning, tomorrow is a big day.

Your team needs you, and you need them. Let’s work out what each of you bring to the party.

Despite being a leader, you can’t get away completely from delivering tasks. Sometimes, a task rightly requires your authority and insight. Other times, it doesn’t and it can be delegated. True delegation transfers ownership rather than control. It shows trust and builds high performance. And an additional benefit is that you don’t need to do it.

Today’s activities:

Look through your task list with a critical eye and find one that doesn’t have to be done by you. It might be a recurring task or a one off. Be objective and honest here. This isn’t about carrying on as before because you’ve always done it.

Spend five minutes writing down the task’s purpose, the systems you use to complete it, its timeframe and priority levels.

Now, delegate that task. Make clear to your chosen delegate that they own the task because you trust them to do it. Make sure to offer support, such as training on unfamiliar systems or presentation skills. Put in a ten minute feedback chat for afterwards.

Day two is done. You’re down one task and you’re thriving with shorter and more focused meetings. It’s going well.

Join us on Thursday 26 June

Go with me on this. It might take a little time to fully reap its benefits, but once you take the step you’ll see the difference. Today’s activities are as follows.

Let’s get our energy maps. Look for the time when you peak, or as near to it as you can get. Now, go into your calendar and block out one hour at that time. Move meetings if you need to. Give that block the following name: Thinking Hour. Maybe put it in a different colour.

Next step: tell your colleagues, managers, an assistant if you have one, what that hour is for. It’s your time for strategic, creative, impactful thinking. Obviously if there’s an emergency then people can contact you, but set clear (and high) thresholds for that happening.

If you’re laughing at the mere thought of doing this then go back over the earlier sessions. This hour isn’t a luxury. It’s an essential part of being an effective leader. It’s important, so stick with it. Sure, on occasions you might have to cancel or move it, but the key is general consistency. Once your colleagues and teams get used to it and start to appreciate the value it is adding, they’ll come to terms with an hour a day where they can’t generally contact you.

Join us on Friday 27 June

You have three tasks left.

Keep generally consistent and motivated to retain the hour. I appreciate that having an hour to think every day might seem odd, but it won’t take long for thoughts and ideas to fill it.

Make the hour productive. If you come up with three innovative ideas, use the next session to work out which one you want to deliver. If you need to do some learning or deep-research a topic, the hour is there to get started. If you're mentoring someone, use the hour to plan your next session.

Drop me a message via the Raw Identity Coaching website for a free 30 minute coaching session to reinforce the new systems you’ve set up. I’d also love to know how you found this challenge and your ideas for the next one.

One week. 75 minutes of work. You’re changing the way you lead, empowering and growing your high-performing teams, and giving yourself time to think. Well done.

Five Day Challenge: Time To Think

Welcome to the June 2025 Five Day Challenge

Get in touch for a free 30 minute coaching session to reinforce your new system

Five Day Challenge:

Time To Think